Her trademark includes dresses in soft pastel hues and the use of couture-level fabrics like satin-faced organza. The crowning touch is the sensuality the bridal gowns exude.

Wang's approach is not just a design concept; it is a necessary strategy for survival in a business that requires both talent and toughness to succeed. It has been a long, hard road. "In many ways," Wang sighs, "running my own company has been impossibly difficult. Yes, it is the realization of a lifelong dream, but the timing was late, for me. I had two such great careers prior to this, that in a way my dream kind of got shelved. This is not a world for a small, little company."

Without her father's help, Wang could not even dream of doing what she's doing. As her chief investor, he has dunk several million dollars into the business. Chances are he will never see much gain from his investment since garment companies are typically not big money-makers, especially on the luxe end. And almost never when they're small. So while Cheng Ching Wang the father had encouraged Vera to open her own company, Cheng Ching Wang the eminent businessman is not altogether thrilled with what he has gotten himself into.

"It's not his gig. I mean, he used to love to buy me beautiful clothes, but there's a great difference between buying clothes and funding a fashion company." In the garment industry today a $100 million company is not large, which makes Wang's company small.

Wang and her younger brother were raised on Manhattan's Upper East Side by their mother Florence Wu, a UN translator who grew up in palaces and summer mansions as the youngest daughter of a Chinese warlord , and father Cheng Ching, an oil and pharmaceutical tycoon. At 7 Vera began ice skating and by 19 she came in fifth in the Junion United States pair championship. Since she was dating the French naional champion at the time, she trained for one more year and did some exhibition skating. Then, unable to see herself living on the ice-show circuit, she quit.

She followed her mom to high-fashion salons in the U.S. and Europe. She studied theatre at Sarah Lawrence but switched to art history when she realized that an Asian woman in the early 70s was never going to make it as an actress, and did graduate work at Columbia.